


You Are Light

by AidaRonan



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Forest Deity Steve Rogers, Guaranteed happy ending, Hand Jobs, Light Angst, M/M, Masturbation, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slightly surreal sexytimes, fabulism, magical sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:21:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23240881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidaRonan/pseuds/AidaRonan
Summary: Bucky's got a need so deep, he never knew he could feel this way before he got thrown into a war.On a rare night of peace, he slips into the forest for some much needed alone time and finds an ancient cottage. It's as good a place as any to settle things.Until he falls asleep, waking up to find that he's not as alone as he thought.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 72
Kudos: 584
Collections: Sweet and Gentle Steve/Bucky





	You Are Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bisexualcapps (SaltyCalm)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltyCalm/gifts), [adhoori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adhoori/gifts).



> For Avery and Aanal, because this is at least 10% their fault.

Before the war, Bucky never would’ve known there were levels to how worked up a fella could get. Back in Brooklyn, he’d get a little hot under the collar, he’d tug one off or find someone to go home with, and that’d be that until the next time.

The need is bigger now, a chasm that aches somewhere deep in his soul. It goes beyond needing to come. It’s the tension in his shoulders that he can’t shake out. It’s the noises he still hears even when they’re miles away from the fighting and the air is quiet and still.

They’re marching. It feels like they’re always marching when they’re not in a trench. When was the last time Bucky’s feet were dry and free of blisters? He doesn’t know the answer any more than he knows when it was he last came.

Under the cover of night, with the moon gone behind thick clouds, camp feels like a surreal place. Some kind of crack between the boards of reality where they’re all tucked away. There are whispers in the air that could be the leaves of the trees shivering together, that could also be men swapping stories of back home, rehashing letters, or describing their favorite meals in ways that border on pornographic.

Jones is on watch at the southwest corner, an unlit cigarette sitting between his lips. And that’s how Bucky knows he’s got it bad, when just seeing a mouth wrapped around the filter of a smoke can make that smoldering need in his gut kick up embers that burn and burn and burn.

“You’re not going AWOL, are you?” Jones asks.

“I just need to be alone for one goddamned minute.” Bucky yawns, and Christ he’s tired too. Sometimes he can’t decide which thing he feels more—exhaustion, need, fear, anger. Everything stacks on top of everything else in piles that feel more and more precarious as the days wear on.

“If you get yourself killed or captured, we never had this conversation.”

“I’ll be sure to leave a note on my corpse. ‘Snuck out. Never talked to Corporal Jones. As a matter of fact, who’s Corporal Jones?’”

“There a girl?” Jones asks.

“Christ, I wish. Don’t shoot me when I get back.”

“I’ll do my best.”

And then Bucky’s stalking away from camp, carefully stepping so he doesn’t trip over roots and rocks, hoping the reports of this forest being largely empty and untouched by the war are true, because getting taken out by a landmine because he needed to touch his dick would be a hell of a way to go after making it so far.

He’s moving carefully through the brush when the clouds unfold and let the moonlight slip through, silvery light falling on a small cabin.

No, a cottage. Cottage is a better word. The walls are moss-covered stones fitted tightly together, the roof half-rotted away. Bucky circles it, the logical side of his brain wary even while everything in his bones seems to settle. There’s an energy about it that feels like lying on a patch of warm sand right by the ocean. He steps closer, peering in through the glassless windows.

It’s a one room place, probably older than any building in New York. It’s empty too other than what appears to be an old wooden table supported by stones. It, well, it looks like a nice place to lie down. Bucky had figured on doing his business against a tree. Getting to stay off the ground feels like a luxury, and he’s not gonna look that gift horse in the mouth.

He steps carefully over the remnants of whatever door used to occupy the frame. The inside of the cottage feels even warmer and safer than the outside. Bits of old pottery crunch under his boots like the gravel of a familiar road.

Bucky slides onto the table and wastes no time getting into his army pants, pulling out his cock, the snug wrap of his fingers nearly killing him for how good they feel. The moan he releases is too loud, he knows, but he can’t stop it. He needs this so much it’s like he can’t breathe for it. His hand slides up and down again, and he bites his lip to reign himself in. His next noise is breathy and so quiet he barely hears it himself.

His blood sings with pleasure even while his eyes droop and droop, struggling to stay open. For weeks, Bucky’s been too wound up to sleep—too afraid to let go for long, to let his consciousness dip too deep. Since they got off the boats in Morocco, it’s been like a movie in his head. Everything that could go wrong looping horribly anytime he tries to catch a wink.

Here though… It’s like being in a church. (Except for the part where Bucky would never touch his dick in church.) There’s a sanctity. A bone deep sureness that nothing and no one could hurt him inside of these walls.

Another pull down his length, tension building. He’s close, blinking like syrup while he thinks about letting go, just letting go.

A breathy sigh. His eyes are so very heavy, so ready to…

Bucky falls asleep before he finishes.

* * *

There’s someone in the cottage. A human someone. Steve can feel the essence of their soul emanating through the trees, calling him back to the ancient walls. And so he goes.

It’s been a long time since anyone visited. The cottage only calls the weary and deserving, those in desperate need of rest. Sometimes they need help too. Steve can heal them when they’re asleep. He can mend bones and stitch broken hearts back together.

This though, this is a new one.

The man on the altar is beautiful. Steve thinks all good humans are beautiful, but he can tell this one’s special. It’s not in the stunning cut of his face, but in the sparks of light in his soul that glow like fireflies. There’s darkness there too—pain and fear trying to snuff out the flame. But the light. So much light that Steve knows nothing could ever stamp it out completely.

There’s also…

“Oh.”

Steve hasn’t been in one of his human forms in a while. It takes him a minute to realize what he’s walked in on. The length of hard flesh is going soft in the man’s hand. Some of that would’ve been the energy Steve left in the cottage. Steve feels a little bad about that. Especially since he can feel it now, how much the man needed that private moment. A bit of rest in its own right.

Steve could. He _could_.

“Bucky,” Steve says quietly, the name coming to his mouth when he searches for it. He gently strokes the man’s hair. “Bucky wake up.”

Bucky’s eyes blink open. And oh, he’s so tired. So tired that the cottage is pulling at Steve’s energy, trying to use it to heal and mend. Steve stems the flow to a trickle and keeps petting softly at the man’s soft strands.

“Hello?” Bucky asks, his hand dropping away from his cock. “Fuck am I asleep? Oh for Christ’s… One goddamned chance to get away for…”

“You’re not asleep.” Steve swipes an arc across his forehead. He wonders what it feels like for Bucky with Steve still in spirit form.

“Pal, I’m talking to something I can’t even see. If I’m not asleep, I’m gonna have to rethink a lot of shit.”

“Oh. Right.” Steve lets one of his human forms manifest. This one’s always been Steve’s favorite. A slight body with delicate bones. Pale hair from his head to the space between his legs. Bucky gapes at him and gasps prettily.

“Is this a wet dream? I could maybe appreciate a wet dream.”

“You’re not asleep,” Steve says again, more firm this time. “But if you want me to...” He looks at the erection Bucky’s abandoned.

“Christ, look at you. I don’t even give a fuck if I’m asleep or awake, of course I want you to.”

Gently, so gently, Steve moves and takes Bucky into his mouth.

* * *

If it’s a dream, it’s the best dream Bucky’s ever had. The blond guy is the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on. Thin and bony and small, his hands too big, his cheekbones and collarbones sharp enough to murder. He’s got his mouth on Bucky and it feels…

Bucky lets his eyes close, reaches down to slide his fingers into hair that feels like spun silk. So clean for a war. So clean.

Up and down Steve’s mouth glides. Steve. Bucky knows his name is Steve. How? Doesn’t matter if he can do that with his mouth.

Up and down. So wet. So hot.So good on his cock that Bucky could weep and thank all the angels. There’s friction where his lips go. There’s something deeper too, warm and growing deep inside. It’s not a feeling a fella could give him with just his mouth. But there’s nothing inside Bucky. No fingers or anything else to find that spot and rub it and build it all up like it feels like it’s being built.

And yet…

You can be loud, the voice in Bucky’s head reminds him. It’s just a dream.

Bucky moans something obscene and feels Steve shudder.

“Can you-” Bucky doesn’t have to finish. Steve’s mouth moves off of him, his hand taking its place. His tongue slides across Bucky’s balls, traces the skin of his perineum, then settles on his hole where he circles the tight rim.

It’s heaven. Bucky can feel the gentle flick and slide of Steve’s tongue across his nerve endings, but at the same time, it feels like Steve’s got his whole tongue up inside of him too, tucked up somewhere it could never reach, licking and-  
  
There’s so much tension in Bucky’s body, so much that he knows he wouldn’t be able to hold it if he was awake. It’s been too long. He’s needed this too much.

But he’s not awake, so his lungs are the pressure valve. Bucky groans and moans where he writhes beneath Steve, letting Steve lick and jerk him and do things to him no one should be able to do.

Why ‘Steve’? He can only think of one Steve he knows in real life and he never once wanted to… Fuck if he knows what his brain is doing to get him through this war, but he’ll take a million more dreams like this. No more nightmares, just Steve breaking him down every night and putting him back together.

“Need you,” Bucky gasps out, and everything stops like time itself has stuttered to a halt. Bucky whimpers.

“Shh, I’ve got you. You’re okay here, Bucky. Everything is okay here.”

One by one, Steve unbuttons Bucky’s shirt, kissing his stomach, his chest. His tongue finds Bucky’s nipples, and Bucky swears it feels like every flick of that tongue over a pebbled peak is sliding across the slit of his cock too. _How_? How is his brain being this good to him?

He opens his eyes, looks down at Steve whose blond hair is catching every moonbeam like strands of woven gold.

“Christ, you are the most beautiful…”

Steve kisses him before Bucky even finishes thinking about how bad he wants him to. His tongue tastes like honeysuckle where it rakes across Bucky’s, licking deep into his mouth while his hand finds Bucky’s cock again to grip it and tug and tug and-

Bucky exhales his next moan into Steve’s mouth. In response, Steve kisses him even harder, jerks him faster, and nips hungrily at his lips.

Inside me inside me inside me, Bucky thinks. That’s how you do a lucid dream, right? You think about what you want and-

Bucky plants his face in Steve’s neck, moaning against skin that smells like damp earth and springtime and that first crisp day of autumn. Steve’s in him, moving in and out of his hole like it’s nothing. Didn’t even have to get him wet. It’s magic. It’s-

“Oh, Christ.”

Bucky’s arms wrap around him and hold on. His thighs do the same, tightly bracketing Steve’s hips where they pump his cock in deeper and deeper.

“Don’t stop.”

“I won’t, not until you…” Steve thrusts in again. “Not until you come for me, Bucky. It’s what you need, so it’s what I need. And you do need it, don’t you? You need it so much.”

He rests his forehead against Bucky’s, nuzzles their noses together, and breathes hot across his cheek. God, his breath smells like honeysuckle too. Bucky wants to die here, to die here and never leave this cottage ever again.

Steve presses kisses to his lips, to his cheeks, across every inch of his forehead, his hips never faltering even for a second. In and out. In and out, and Bucky’s drowning and he doesn’t care if he swims out.

“God.” He’s gotta be marking Steve’s back up, clawing at it like an animal. But everything feels so goddamned good. If this wasn’t a dream, he would’ve come so long ago that he can’t fathom when that time was. Even as it is, he can barely stand it.

“Please,” Bucky gasps.

“I can make it feel like…”

Bucky never gets to ask ‘like what’ because the dream answers it for him. Bucky’s head thumps back against the table, hard enough to make a sound. His whole chest rumbles with a groan.

It feels like he’s being sucked on again, like there’s a mouth working him over in all the ways he likes best. But there is no mouth. Bucky knows there’s no mouth because Steve is on top of him thrusting up inside of him with the most perfect cock anyone ever imagined. He knows because their bodies are pressed flush and the only friction his cock was getting until this moment was from Steve’s skin brushing against it with every rocking movement.

And yet he can feel it. Lips so warm and wet and tight. A tongue that knows all the best spots to lap and flick to drive Bucky crazy.

Bucky’s wound tighter than a freshly tuned watch. He’s gonna break. He’s gonna shatter into a million pieces so small no one will ever find them.

The mouth that doesn’t exist takes him down into its throat and his hands dig into Steve’s back and Bucky wants to say he’s sorry but what are words? Did he ever even know any?

“It’s okay,” Steve says. “I can’t feel anything I don’t want to.”

Do you feel me?

“Every perfect inch of you,” Steve says, and he kisses Bucky hard, and Bucky closes his eyes and comes. And comes. And keeps coming until he feels like he’s going to melt into the table, all boneless and sated in a way he has never been before.

When he looks up, somehow, Steve’s got his mouth on him, softly sucking away the evidence and swallowing it down.

“Thank you,” Bucky says, reaching for Steve with trembling arms.

And then he starts crying and he can’t stop. Still naked and more beautiful than anything’s got a right to be, Steve wraps him in his arms and holds him tight.

“You need this too,” Steve says, stroking his hair and pressing gentle kisses to his temple and his cheek and the tear tracks that run down Bucky’s face. “You’re not the things you’ve had to do, Bucky. There’s so much light in you. This place doesn’t let the dark in.”

Bucky clings to Steve like a lifeline, smells his floral breath, and cries until he feels like he’s been released in some other way that’s even deeper and more important.

“There you go.” Steve smiles at him, uses his thumbs to wipe Bucky’s cheeks dry.

“This is the weirdest wet dream I’ve ever had.”

“You’re not asleep,” Steve says for the third time that night, brushing Bucky’s lips with his fingertips before kissing them again. “I’m glad we’re both real. I’ve been alone for a long time.”

“You said you could feel me. You weren’t just saying what I wanted to hear?”

Steve smiles warmly and traces the line of Bucky’s jaw. “Of course you care about that and still have the nerve to think you’re not a good man.”

Bucky swallows.

“You should sleep though,” Steve says. “I’ve met two of your needs. Let me meet the rest.”

Bucky frowns and looks out the window, trying to gauge where the moon is at in the sky. What he really should do is get back. Wake up and get back.

“Time does what I need it to here. I’ll make sure you’re awake before it’s too late.”

“If you are real and this ain’t a dream, you’ll let me kiss you goodbye?”  
  
Steve smiles. “I’d really like it if you did.” A hand pushing Bucky’s sweaty hair back from his forehead.“But only if you quit stalling already and get some much-needed rest.”

Bucky laughs softly, but lets his head fall back against the table. He’s out before he can even think about falling asleep.Peaceful and quiet. In his real dreams, there are gentle rains and fields of wildflowers, and a small-boned man who rolls him onto his back in the grass and…

When Bucky wakes up, he feels renewed. The aches and pains his body has been picking up every day and every mile are gone. The exhaustion that he thought he’d never shake out of his bones has gone with them. Even his socks are dry.

“Steve?” he calls quietly. Like earlier, Steve materializes, his body small and shamelessly naked. “Hell, I really wasn’t asleep, was I?”

Steve grins and shakes his head. “I tried to tell you.”

“Thank you. I don’t know what… thank you.” Bucky reaches for him, touches his shoulder, then lets his hand drop off. “You live here?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Somehow, Bucky understands that. He keeps looking at Steve, his skin so pale in the moonlight. Steve’s already reaching for Bucky’s cheek when the frown settles onto Bucky’s face.

“I’ll never see you again, will I?” Bucky asks quietly.

“I can bend time a little, Bucky, but seeing the future’s not my skillset.” Steve takes his hand, swipes a thumb across the backs of his knuckles. “All I can say is that I hope so.”

“I could stay.”

“You could.” Steve nods. “But you won’t.”

No, he won’t. Bucky might be tired of fighting and shit-scared of dying, but he’s not gonna leave his men. And he’s not gonna let Jones take the fall for letting him out.

“I’ll take that kiss,” Bucky says, but he puts his hand on Steve’s chest to stop him, his fingers resting in the pale golden fleece lightly covering Steve’s pectorals. “Do you- do you get to want things or is it about what I want? I really need to know if you enjoyed it because you enjoyed it, or if it was because I-”

“I get to want,” Steve says, and then he kisses Bucky softly, his fingers curled around the back of Bucky’s neck. “I could’ve soothed it away without ever touching you or even letting you know I was here. Don’t think I didn’t enjoy every minute.”

Another kiss, softer. This, Bucky can tell, is the goodbye.

“If you ever make it back to this forest…”

One last lingering press of lips. Bucky holds Steve’s hand until he steps over the rotted wood of the threshold and feels his fingertips slip away.

Outside, it’s impossibly still dark. The moonlight is gone again, and Bucky has to feel his way back to camp one careful step at a time.

“That was quick,” Jones says around the cold cigarette when Bucky approaches, Bucky’s hands up in the air until he’s close enough to see the whites of Jones’s eyes. Jones might be a radio guy, but Bucky’s seen him shoot.

“Was it?” Bucky asks. He feels like it’s been a lifetime. He feels like a bear crawling out of hibernation at the first kiss of spring. “Thanks for not firing at me.”

“You’d have done it for me,” Jones says, before the sincerity gets to be too much at which time he adds, “Besides, if something had happened to you, we’d all be spared the trouble of looking at that godawful face.”

Bucky claps him on the shoulder once and then goes to find his tent. Somehow, inexplicably, he manages to drift off after just a few minutes.

He thinks of Steve and the cottage every day. In the trenches, at Kreischberg, after they get out and form the unit, after they tear down base after base with their bare hands. Every time Bucky feels like he can’t go on, he thinks of that precious space, of finding it when the war is over and staying a while.

(Sometimes, when he fires his gun, he wonders if it would still let him in.)

He’ll never find out though. Because Carter is reaching for him with both hands, the wind eating her screams, and he can’t reach back.

The handle breaks and Bucky falls. And falls. And falls.

* * *

The Winter Soldier’s target is on the other side of the woods. Hydra has supplied him with night vision goggles for this mission, and he uses them to navigate the dense trees. The night is pitch, the moon hidden away in the sky. The soldier has to lift his feet high to avoid the roots. He has to set them down carefully to keep his steps quiet.

Mile after mile passes in the strange green tint of the goggles. And then he’s blind, the moon slipping through the clouds. The soldier rips the goggles from his face, his eyes stinging and struggling to focus.

When they do, there’s… a cottage, the moonlight illuminating moss-covered stones and rotting beams that probably held a roof long, long ago.

The soldier doesn’t know why he steps inside, but he does. There is nothing of use to him inside, and yet, he can’t seem to get himself to leave. With gloved fingers, he traces the edge of what might be an old table.

“Bucky?”

Who the hell is- Who is-

The soldier shakes his head.

Blond hair, hands that are too big. They pull at the soldier’s mask, prying it away from the sol- from the a- from his face.

“You should lie down,” Steve says, soft and firm all at once, and the soldier complies. His eyes fall shut. He’s not cold. He can’t remember the last time he slept and wasn’t cold.

Several hours later, Bucky wakes up, reaching for Steve. He comes easily, willingly, letting Bucky draw him close. For the second time in this cottage, Bucky cries, deep wracking sobs that shake them both.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Steve says, holding Bucky with a ferocity that Bucky’s never felt before, “and it’s as true now as it was then. Only light gets in here, Bucky. Only light.”

“How can I still be good after all that, Steve? How?” Christ, he can’t breathe.

“Oh Buck,” Steve kisses the corner of his mouth. He kisses the other. Then Bucky’s cheeks, his forehead, the tip of his nose. That spot, he meets with his own nose, nuzzling into Bucky’s face and resting their foreheads together. “If you weren’t, you wouldn’t ask.”

Bucky cries himself out and lets Steve pet his hair until he sleeps again.

“I could stay,” Bucky whispers when he wakes up, his voice hoarse. Steve’s fingers remain in his hair, carding through it softly like it’s the only task that matters in the whole world.

“You could.”

“Would you-”

“I wanted you to last time, but I knew I couldn’t ask you,” Steve says. “Now I can.”

The soldier never makes his next mission. Hydra combs every inch of the woods for him when he fails to show. They turn over every rock, search every cave, and look in every tree.

They don’t find a thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading... whatever this is. 
> 
> I'm on [Twitter.](https://twitter.com/BiStarBucky)


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